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by embolalia



Category: Scandal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Missing Scene, Scandal Pilot 1x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 11:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15971501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: "Somewhere, closer and closer, is a room where for two days and nights they were lovers."Nearly a year and a half after leaving Fitz, Liv flies to Camp David, where she was once happy. Missing scene for the Scandal pilot, also based on flashbacks from later episodes.





	Home

Olivia’s kept herself away from him for sixteen months except for the devastation of Cyrus’s wedding, except for that moment tangled in his arms, his mouth on hers and the weight of a promise on her finger. She’s kept herself away but she can’t stop herself from dreaming. She hasn’t seen Fitz in eight months. She hasn’t seen him in three nights. 

In the helicopter, avoiding the eyes of secret service agents who must surely know, she feels the proximity of Camp David like a gravity well dragging her down. Voices crackle over her consciousness, the agents relaying her arrival time to the ground, and she tries not to smile too broadly. Somewhere, closer and closer, is a room where for two days and nights they were lovers. By day they argued, debated, planned to make the world a better place. He loved her mind; she loved that he knew her. In that cabin, in the dark of night, she made popcorn on the stove, barefoot in his undershirt, and he made a game of throwing it in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth, and she could imagine him being silly with their children someday, and they christened the kitchen floor. She slept in his arms, and when she woke up he was still there. Two days turned out to be long enough to forget that they didn’t belong to each other.

That first day, obscured now, is one of her happiest memories.

When he brought his wife to her doorstep on the third night, she had already pulled back the blankets on the bed, had some shy fantasy waiting on her lips, was flushed with anticipation. She ate dinner with them while her cabin throbbed in shame in the distance.

But it’s been sixteen months and Olivia’s body presses toward the window, inches closer to that place that felt like home. Maybe they’ll have a minute, maybe an hour. She can see it, the door locked behind them for however long can be spared, can hear the hitch of his breath as she whispers in his ear to _take off your clothes_ so wrinkles don’t betray them.

Sixteen months of nights staring at a blank pillow on the other side of her bed, long enough that she can’t imagine a time when she’ll stop longing for him. It could be Cyrus who suggested Camp David, but she doesn’t want to think so. And even if Fitz is manipulating her by bringing her back to this place, it’s more proof how surely he knows her. Or proof the cabin calls to him too. Maybe he’s already living inside this same fantasy, and he won’t even need her to explain before she lets go of everything and sinks into his arms. Just for a minute. The low complaints of the secret service radios rumble through her, precious reminders that she’s not dreaming. She won’t cry, she promises herself. She won’t say she loves him if she can help it.

From overhead, the little roofs should be hard to differentiate, but recognition comes instantly: the snake of the path, the front porch angled toward pine woods. Home. 

A voice eases free of the radio, a message so short and staccato Olivia holds her breath. _Foxtail_. His wife’s codename. There, defiling it again.

Slivers of grace still lance through the afternoon: that Mellie greets her first, that they don’t walk in together. That when he sees her, he says her name in its most intimate form: Livvie. That when he sees the ring on her finger, he loses his breath for a moment. And in the woods where they fucked among fallen leaves, he promises: _there’s only one person I love_. And she believes he could never betray her.


End file.
